


Want

by ellebb



Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: Blood, F/M, Knifeplay, but /really/ not really, exploring a little bit of kink, just now posting here, post-sleepover at mazelinka's, wrote this before the october update
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-30
Updated: 2017-10-30
Packaged: 2019-01-26 18:05:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12563128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellebb/pseuds/ellebb
Summary: Her hand still on his shoulder, she plucked at his shirt. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to try something before I go.”“Oh?” he said, a smile threatening his lips.“Easy, tiger,” she said. “Could you do the thing again?”She tapped at her throat where the mark of his curse had appeared last night. His smile slipped away, and she could practically see the thoughts flashing through his head.“I just want another look.  Examine it.  Play a little magical doctor.”





	Want

“Julian,” Xan hissed.

His closed eyelids scrunched up, and he made an unhappy sound.  Leaning on her elbow over him, she reached out to squeeze his shoulder.  ‘Leaning over him’ was a bit of a misnomer, though; the little twin bed had her practically sprawled over his chest.  This had had its benefits and its detriments in the couple of hours she’d drifted asleep, and if he weren’t so exhausted from the vampire eel bite she’d suspect the ‘benefits and detriments’ would have increased tenfold.

“Julian.”

“I’m-- I’m up, I’m up,” he squinted at her, at the dark still pressing against the cottage’s little window. “What is it?”

“I need to go,” Xan said.  She sat up. “I don’t want the palace missing me.”

He glanced at the dark window again. “So soon?”

She paused.  His heavy eye gazed up at her, misty and with a knitted brow.  Like a flitting, nervous bird, his hand brushed across her knuckles.  He was a dangerous man, Julian Devorak-- but not in the way Nadia believed.  His desperate staring and his red mouth parted and his rose-colored flush, which he had brandished at her on several occasions already in a single night-- threatened to tie themselves around her ankle like a bag of bricks and toss her in the canal.  A canal of something she wouldn’t mind tasting.

Her hand still on his shoulder, she plucked at his shirt. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to try something before I go.”

“Oh?” he said, a smile threatening his lips.

“Easy, tiger,” she said. “Could you do the thing again?”

She tapped at her throat where the mark of his curse had appeared last night. His smile slipped away, and she could practically see the thoughts flashing through his head.

“I just want another look.  Examine it.  Play a little magical doctor.”

His chest puffed with a snort of laughter at that.  He spread his arms over the thin straw mattress until his long arms had his hands dangling over the edge. He gave her a  _look_.

“Like I said, darling,” he drawled. “The offer still stands.”

She cocked a brow at him.

He continued. “Although, you’ll have to--” His eye wandered up and down her form. “Mar some lovely--”

She was already up and digging in her bag before he could finish the thought. She returned to the bed with her dagger, and climbed back up.  Except this time she swung her leg over to straddle him.  His eye widening, he inhaled sharply. She settled back around his waist, keeping most of her weight in her legs and off his gut.

Xan gave him her own  _look_.

“Comfortable?” she asked.

“...Yes,” he managed.

She couldn’t lie-- the immediate change in him, in the smoothness of his voice gone rough and tight, excited her.  Her heart jumped and ran her pulse a little faster.  Leaning forward, she picked his hand up by the wrist.  As she bent, her breath ghosted over his chin and his mouth moved instinctively, as if he would chase pell-mell after a kiss if allowed.  She placed his hand on the pillow by his head, palm-up.

She sat back.

Tightening her grip on the dagger, she paused. “I’m going to be using my magic-- I’ll be careful, but tell me if it’s uncomfortable or painful.”

The fingers of his hand on the pillow flexed, as if restricted by an invisible bind. He nodded sharply.

“Yes,” he blurted.

Xan avoided his overbright gaze; that was something for another time, when there was more time.  Dagger flashing, she cut the palm of her hand.  Blood welled up from the wound, the skin around it going pink.  She presented the cut to him.

Julian blinked, and the seal on his throat blazed with white moonlight, illuminating his face.  The skin of his palm, one moment clean and unbroken under long and elegant fingers, welled with a cut mirroring hers.  Except she didn’t have hers anymore.

Quickly, Xan bent forward.  She pushed his chin up with the heel of her hand, tilting his head back.  She wasn’t exactly rough, but she wasn’t gentle either. Julian squirmed.

“Stay still,” she told him.

He stilled.  She still had her weight on her legs, and only just barely hovered along his body.  Heat pooled in that thin gap between them.

Xan focused on the sigil.  Just by sight alone, she knew it was Asra’s.  The certain turn and curls of the marks came from his hand, and the way the integral will of the magic was parsed brought his voice into her ear.  Before the white light of the mark could dissipate, she tossed out her magic.  She slipped through the twists and turns of the curse, intuiting the paths by her innate knowledge of Asra and his ways.  Like body-memory.

It felt… dark.  Dark and unknowable and intensely hungry.  Ardent and needy.

And she couldn’t find the end of it.  She could fumble her way through the labyrinth of the magic, but she couldn’t-- just a little more, and she could have it-- She  _knew_ \--

The mark on his throat faded away.

Xan made a frustrated sound, her breath wafting over the blank patch of skin where it had been.  She only realized then how deep and fast his chest was fluttering beneath her.  She sat back.

Julian stared at her, half-jerking up as if to follow her. “Xanthioppe--”

She ignored this. “I couldn’t get it.  But I feel as if I  _could_ , if just--”

His hand fumbled at her ankle, her calf. “Please.  Anything.  I want-- I want--”

She couldn’t help it; time was scarce, but his flushed face and bitten lip made her want to reward him a little.

She fell back forward, slipped her hand behind his head, and dug her fingers into his red locks.  She yanked him back into the pillow.  He hissed.  She nuzzled into his jaw.

“Don’t tell me what you want,” she said, low and imperious. “I know exactly what you want.”

Loud and guttural in her ear, he groaned.  She trailed kisses up his jaw.  His hands fluttered at her sides, and she tightened her grip in his hair.  Her mouth found his, her tongue opened him, and her lips pushed him.  She could taste heat in his mouth and in the thumping of his chest against her breast.

Xan released his hair from her grip and sat up. 

Even with the long night and the short sleep, she’d still had enough red lip-paint on to leave a mess on his face.  She turned to his palm again and ran a finger over the now completely unbroken skin.  He briefly closed his fingers over hers before she slipped away and climbed down from the thin mattress.

“You should go back to sleep and really rest,” she told him.

He grinned up at her and spread his limbs out. “And how do you expect me to do that?  Leaving me here, alone and weak and vulnerable to the ministrations of a callous old woman--”

“I’m telling her you said that.”

Xan picked up her bag and straightened her clothes.

“...Will I see you again?” Julian asked.

She turned back to him. “Shouldn’t you be a little more afraid of seeing me again?  Remember where I’m returning?”

He just gazed back at her with that tremulous look in his eye.  She went back, bent to him, and plucked at his shirt.  Folding the fabric, she pressed her lips down hard around it.  She released it and the red kiss she’d left behind.

“I’ll know you by the mark I left,” she smiled.

He smiled too, and despite the burning in her back from the lingering look he gave her, she left the little cottage for the quiet night.


End file.
